Florida Georgia Line - This Is How We Roll

I have completely neglected this space for far too long, there's no denying it. I am determined to revive this page, though, and plan to write an entry every Sunday. This is a very doable goal for myself because there is no end to awful Contemporary Popular Country out there, and one day a week at my work our local country music station is played, so I am acutely aware of the happenings in that genre.

The song that inspired me to come back here and start writing again is one of the most powerfully awful songs ever set to tape. Each and every aspect of this recording embodies everything I hate with all of my being. That song is Florida Georgia Line's number 1 hit single, "This Is How We Roll". Easily one of the most crass cash-grabs in recent history, this is a benchmark for blatant commercialism and utter lack of substance.



Let's break this down piece by piece, shall we? First, there is the music video. It is our two "sexy" frontmen of this group riding on the top of a tractor trailer while keeping their hands in the general vicinity of their groins, intermixed with unexplained shots of females making eyes with the camera, a party you couldn't pay me enough money to attend, motorcycles, and explosions for no discernible reason. It's like someone wrote down a list of "appealing" characteristics of a hit music video, put them in a bag, shook it up, and just grabbed a handful of items. There's no rhyme or reason to this vomitous display of shallowness. Next, you add a cameo appearance by a big country star to ride their coattails to fame.

And all of that is to say nothing of the song itself.

So, what is the deal here? Is this supposed to be some kind of breed of Contemporary Popular Country and rap? Is that what's going on here? Whatever it is supposed to be, the result is unbearably awful. If I'm supposed to be impressed by the singer's eclectic love of shitty music from all walks of life, I'm definitely not. Hank Williams Jr. (that's the Hank I assume they are referring to, as Hank Sr. is far too excellent for these types, and Hank III . . . I just doubt it) and Drake are both artists that I find completely wretched and have no idea why people enjoy them at all. Having both of these acts on your "mixtape" is not impressing me. Nor is your usage of the phrase "holla at your boy". Tossing that in there is calculated, to be sure, though I'm not sure what the intent really was. Then we have our Luke Bryan cameo, in which he says "Yeah, we cuss on them Mondays and pray on them Sundays". Rhyming days of the week is horribly lazy, and is swearing an un-Christian thing to do? I'm genuinely unsure. I know the bible doesn't condemn swearing because the concept of words being taboo (at least in the English language) arose because of the Battle of Hastings, which was clearly a bit after the life of Christ. Even if we accept that "good Christians" don't use fowl language, what are you saying? That you put on an act every Sunday to appear holy, but don't walk the walk during the other six days of the week? Once again, I find myself unimpressed.

"This Is How We Roll" might be one of the finest examples of precisely how to calculatingly create a number one single in the world of Contemporary Popular Country. The fact that it succeeded in doing just that speaks volumes for the lowest common denominator standards of the core audience for this type of music.

It's great to be back, folks, and I'll see you next Sunday.

Gretchen Wilson - Work Hard, Play Harder

One thing fans of contemporary pop country love is some sense of "working class roots" in the artists they love. No matter how unbelievably filthy rich they might be now, the fact that they once were not adds some seal of "authenticity" to them, for some reason. Never mind the fact that most recording artists were at some point not incredibly well-to-do (with the exception of people like Lady GaGa or the usually talentless children of other celebrities like Kelly Osbourne), and had to work their way up from the bottom. Gretchen Wilson fits this mold perfectly. According to her Wikipedia page, she grew up in relative poverty with her young, single mother. She dropped out of school at 15 to work in restaurants and began singing in some cover band by the age of 18, at which age she was overheard by some bar manager that booked her to sing cover songs. There is a giant gap between this part of her biography and her signing to a major label in the early 2000's, but who really cares? She was poor, and now she isn't! She made it! And if she can become a giant star because of her karaoke skills then so can you and I!!!

To me, an artist shows what they are worth not because of their upbringing (because that can't be helped), but what they do with their notoriety once they achieve it. Take the excellent example of Mike Watt. Watt also came from humble beginnings, but even though he has performed in many influential bands and appeared with many successful artists (including Sonic Youth), he has still maintained a hard work ethic in his current ventures, and has not allowed his (relative) fame get in the way of his art. Between playing in countless bands (including, recently, Iggy Pop and the Stooges) Mike Watt hosts a podcast that updates on a regular basis and has penned a book. His dedication to his craft is readily apparent, and his working class aesthetic is incredibly genuine because of it.

Such is not the case with Gretchen Wilson. As with basically all contemporary pop country stars, her music is intellectually lazy, catering to the lowest common denominator in order to sell more copies. ("I'm a redneck!", "I like to get drunk!", etc. You get the point.) This is compounded by the fact that she doesn't even write her own music, but rather has a team of songwriters that write for her. Her music videos are nothing more than shoots of parties that her record label is hosting, usually featuring one or more noted celebrities (once again, to sell more copies of the single), from Kid Rock and Hank Williams Jr. to Larry the Cable Guy and other famous people that make my east coast stomach turn just thinking about.

Of all her annoying, lazy songs, there are none that top "Work Hard, Play Harder".



The first thing that strikes me about this song is its inherent dishonesty. While she might have held some challenging jobs in her adolescent years, it has been at least the better part of a decade since Wilson relied on that type of work to pay her bills. I seriously doubt that she looks down at her hands and finds these callouses that she alleges to find there, aside from the ones on her fingertips from occasionally strumming her guitar. This song (once again not penned by her) is a blatant attempt by the songwriting team to appeal to working class folks in the midwest, and sadly, these people go for it. Gretchen Wilson doesn't actually work in a diner and bartend through out the course of her week, only to get dangerously inebriated on Friday nights. In fact, even when she was working in those types of places, she was far too young to be gathering her "rowdy" friends and going to these honky-tonk watering holes she speaks of, so any claims of this being some way of her paying homage to her roots would be patently false as well.

Secondly, there is the laziness of the video that serves as the promotional tool for this song. One would think that in a song about working really hard during the week and cutting loose on the weekend the video would feature Wilson dressed like a waitress "working hard for her money" or something. That would be the obvious choice, and since we have learned that Gretchen Wilson Inc. favors the lowest common denominator, that would be the way to go! Apparently, though, Wilson can't be seen in a music video not donning classic "redneck" attire, so we get nothing of the sort.

Instead, we get scenes of her riding around in a convertible, scenes of her "playing" with her band, and (the one that really gets me) Gretchen Wilson standing by the side of the road, lip-syncing the song while clips from her older videos play on the barn in the background. That's right. They couldn't even be bothered to record enough new footage to fill the three minutes of this song, so they instead recycled footage from older videos, especially the parts that featured the celebrities.

Lastly, if you are a relatively popular recording artist, and you are going to hire people to write your songs for you, you want to make sure that they are not plagiarizing the songs. (For comparison, the Black Crowes song they are alleging that GW Inc. stole is this one, and I have to say, they have a very valid argument.)

Justin Moore - Backwoods

When I listen to the radio, there are few things that get under my skin like lazy songwriting. I like what Henry Rollins said about performing your craft: "Don't be halfway about anything! Life is too short!" When I am exposed to lazy songwriting, it borders on being offensive to me, since it is obvious that the songwriter didn't care enough about their audience to put together a song that is at least well crafted.

Cue Justin Moore's "Backwoods"



If I were a fan of Contemporary Pop Country music (in case you haven't noticed, I'm not) I would be irate that a song that is so lazily written were even being offered to me as an option. Let's face it, the radio is nothing but a marketing tool for music corporations to expose you, the listener, to the many options you have to purchase that music in one form or another, or perhaps to go see that artist in concert.

Simply hearing "Backwoods" makes me want to scream at the speakers of the radio in my office at work, "Are you fucking nuts?!? You are seriously marketing that to me? Fuck you, buddy!" and I'm not even a fan of the genre.

I mean, seriously. Just look at the chorus. The trio of musical geniuses (yes, Justin Moore got not one, but two people to help him with this one) must have sat around a table writing down hackneyed snippets from country songs over the years and thrown them in a hat to pull out later.

"Work hard, play hard."

"Hold my baby tight."

"Lordy have mercy."

"It's a real good life."

Each one of those lyrics could ruin an entire song on their own, but in this case they are strung together at the end of the chorus like some kind of über-clichè. It is very possible that "Backwoods" is the ultimate example of lazy songwriting I have ever come across.

As a side note, I'm not even going to get started on his over-the-top fake accent in this song. I could be here for hours. Suffice to say that it is almost indecipherable, and inexcusable.